Tales from the Office on Employee Recognition, Employee Rewards, Life Hacks, Gamification, and Human Resources.

Monthly Archives: June 2013

We added a new feature this week to help professionals promote their business relationships. We now allow users to recognize anyone with a professional email address.

Beyond employee recognition

Sometimes you want to recognize or be recognized by people outside of your immediate email domain. You may work at a university that has different subdomains or work at a regional office of a national company. Both of these situations require the ability recognize people in other domain networks.

Along with being able to recognize any professional, user profiles are public. Much like LinkedIn, workers can now share their recognition profile with anyone to promote their abilities.

We are excited to see the response from our customers. Cross company recognitions is a feature that has been requested a number of times from our users.

With over half of employee recognition platforms use cash reward (about 62%), it is no wonder that money is on people’s mind when deciding an employee recognition system.

Point-based employee recognition

So far, Recognize has provided a point-based system. A video game-like environment is a softer approach to motivating recognition. However, money is far more important in the workplace. Workers want gifts for helping their company’s profits.

We see that at Recognize, and are looking into ways to providing monetary reward in recognitions. We are not yet ready to reveal how this will play out, but at the moment we see an attachment to recognitions that includes a valued reward.

Adding Bit Coin to employee recognition

Adding rewards to recognitions will continue to evolve at Recognize. We are considering Bit Coin for Recognize. Imagine a platform where you can deposit bit coins and attach bit coin gifts to professional recognitions. Users can later cash out the bit coins with a third party.

Recognize wants to steer clear of direct cash rewards. People are found to work harder for non-cash rewards, than for cash rewards. You can read the study here.

We hope people internalize the social currency of points and their recognition stats. A high recognition score shows a professional is liked and performs well. Nevertheless, adding a gift here and there can’t hurt.

We are excited to announce a new homepage that articulates our product in a long scrolling visual display of top features and key benefits.

Employee recognition is key to helping motivate workers. We needed to showcase the badges, the experience on mobile, the reporting page, the show recognition page, and more through a longer more visual homepage experience.

The homepage now shows the recognition cards and the reporting page. Plus it shows the recognition show page both at the top on mobile and down below on a Mac Air laptop.

Amy Margaret, of Amy Margaret Jewelry, is featured as an advocate for employee recognition.

In between the taller panels, the homepage provides facts about Recognize. It shows that recognitions can be edited and deleted, and that Recognize is a responsive web application.

I urge decision makers in organizations to implement employee recognition deep into its business culture. We hope our new homepage highlights our ability to help socialize and track employee recognition.

Funny to think that Recognize’s first homepage was designed before the app existed. Martin Karasek did a great job designing our initial homepage. It focused on the sign up form and to visually represent the badges. Ten months later, it was time for a redesign.

In this post, I will try to provide advice as to how to launch a successful homepage redesign.

Start from scratch

We are often attached to our current design or our current code base. Designers will use current designs as base rates for future design. Programmers will comment out code to be used later. Detach from your old work and free your homepage to new possibilities. Delete commented out code and use your company’s current and future business strategy as your design base.

For Recognize, we now have a full product and marketing vernacular. Our old homepage didn’t dive deep enough into our product. It didn’t explain our business as a fully functional employee recognition platform. Here’s a screenshot of our old homepage.

When I started the new homepage, I literally deleted everything in our homepage CSS file and deleted all the HTML in the homepage partial. With a clean plate I was able to think clearly and produce something completely new.

Right at the top show a product

Let the world know your company is actively producing something of value. It can be anything you produce, such as a product, community, or service. For instance, if your company produces shoes, you can display a sponsored marathon at the top of the homepage. Showcasing a product or byproduct at the top allows the user to immediately connect your company with a tangible object.

People more likely to scroll than click

It isn’t easy convincing people to use your website. That’s why it is important to show the gist of your business above the fold, or generally the top 600px of the homepage. For content beyond the first 600px, don’t make users click to find it. Make your homepage long enough to explain everything important. Flickr’s homepage redesign is a good example of a nice scrolling experience.

A scrolling homepages tell a story

Write a story in a half dozen sentences, and use each sentence as a section on your homepage. Think of your homepage as an extension of your elevator pitch. For instance, “We build websites for socially responsible companies. We work with brands like Patagonia and Whole Foods. We are community-driven, recently we hosted a hackathon focused on environmentalism. Let us help your business translate its social responsibility into web experiences.” Each one of those sentences can be a complete section on your homepage. Use a graphic or a photograph to visually explain your point. You’ll find users will get a better understanding of your business.

Appeal to logic and to emotion

In your graphics and your copywriting, think of two groups of people: logical people and emotional people. Emotion-driven people are compelled by abstract marketing copywriting and strong imagery. Apple’s slogin “Think Different” is a great example of emotion-driven marketing speak. Whereas listing product specifications is more attractive to logic-driven people. You’ll hit a homerun if you can appeal to both.

For Recognize’s new homepage, the headlines are emotion-driven, such as “Track success” or “Motivate the workplace.” Then, we provide details for our product, such as “Edit and delete recognitions.” The facts help back up the headlines, and that ties your messaging together.

Show photographs of people

Pictures of real people can double homepage conversion. Learn more about that here. If you have customers who use your product, ask them permission to show their profile.

It is 2013: think responsive layouts

If your homepage doesn’t respond to different screen widths and device sizes, then your homepage is outdated. Make sure your designer and developer build different versions of the homepage to display well on mobile, tablet, laptop, and large desktops.

Check your analytics and determine the most used screen resolutions by your users.

Make designs that work well with your most used resolutions.

Use a responsive layout framework, such as Boostrap to easily manage mobile and tablet screen resolutions.

Ensure you aren’t loading large images on mobile and tablet. Use the correct image sizes for your user’s screen dimensions.

Watch analytics

Watch your analytics, and see if you can increase your homepage conversion with a fresh new homepage. It is a fun game when your conversion rate goes up.